“A tick! Oh, Jesus.” Her body convulsed in a violent shudder; then, with an effort, she got hold of herself.
Hooker felt a tug of sympathy for the woman. She was giving it a hell of a try out there, but snakes and ticks and mosquitoes that could eat you alive were not part of life for people from her world. He hoped a tick on her head was the worst ordeal she would have to face on this trip.
He took the swollen body of the tick gently between his fingers. He gave it a quick twist, and it came free of the head with a little pop. Dark red blood squirted into his hand. He tossed the tick’s body away, being careful to keep it out of Connie’s sight.
“Did you get it?” she said.
“Almost.” He slipped his hunting knife out of the sheath. “Bite your finger for a minute.”
“What for?”
“Just do it.”
Connie jammed a knuckle into her mouth and bit down. As she did so, Hooker pricked the point of the knife blade under her scalp and pried out the hard little head of the tick.
“Ouch!”
“That got it,” he said.
“Jesus, I hope so. Are there any more?”
“I didn’t see any.”
“Little bastard.” Connie reached for her head. Hooker caught her wrist.
“Wait a minute.” He dug through his pack for a bottle of alcohol and poured some of it over the neat red pinhole in her scalp.
“Ouch!”
“I’ve got a suggestion you’re not going to like,” he said.
“Such as?”
“Chop off some of this hair. Without the proper hat for cover, it makes too good a hiding place for critters.”
“I had a hat back in Veracruz, but I thought it looked too corny, so I left it there.”
“Maybe you should have brought it,” Hooker said. “Since you didn’t, I think you’d better get rid of some of that hair.”
“Just … cut it off?” It was as though he had asked her to have her teeth pulled.
“Unless you want more little friends like the one we just dug out of your head.”
She shuddered again. “God, no. Cut it.”
Still holding the hunting knife, he took a handful of her hair. It felt soft and alive in his grasp. “I’m not exactly an expert at this,” he said.
“I’ll do it,” Alita offered. She looked quickly at Connie. “If you want me to.”
“Yes, yes, go ahead. Leave me a little, though, will you? I don’t want to come out of this bald.”
Hooker gratefully turned the knife over to Alita and stepped aside. The two chicleros moved in closer to watch as Alita took firm hold of a handful of hair and began sawing at it with the knife.
“Your hair is very soft,” she said. “Like silk.”
“Thanks,” Connie said without enthusiasm.
“I used to cut my father’s hair for him when I was a little girl. His hair was very thick, like mine. Indian hair. Only I had a scissors then. And a razor. I used to give him his shave, too.”
Connie sat with her hands clasped in her lap, eyes closed, as Alita hacked away. She winced as big chunks of blonde hair sifted down across her face and settled on her clasped hands. The whole operation took about ten minutes.
“Okay, all done,” Alita said cheerfully.
Connie opened her eyes. She looked at Hooker, searching for a reaction. He kept his expression carefully neutral. Hesitantly, she raised her hand and touched her head.
“My God, you’ve scalped me!”
“Got to be short or it don’t do no good,” Alita said reasonably.
“A mirror. Where did I put my mirror.” Connie rummaged through her pack and brought out a round mirror with a handle. She held it at arm’s length and looked at herself, turning her head from side to side. She used her free hand to fluff and shape as best she could what was left of her hair.
Hooker watched, being careful at first not to let his feelings show. He knew how much a woman’s hair meant to her. Then, with some surprise, he decided she really didn’t look bad at all. The hair was very short, almost boyish in length now, but the overall effect was entirely feminine. If anything, it made Connie look younger.
She gave him a hopeful look. “Well? Let’s have the verdict. Is it too horrible?”
“It’s not horrible at all,” he said. “In fact, you look pretty darn good. Probably start a whole new style when you get back to the states.”
“You wouldn’t kid me, would you, mister?”
He grinned at her. “Not this time, lady. Not this time.”
She searched his face, looking for any hint of mockery. When she decided he was serious, she allowed herself a tremulous smile. “Well, maybe I can do something with it.”
After another fifteen minutes, with the mirror in one hand and a brush in the other, she said, “I guess this is going to have to do. It’s not something I’d want to spring on the crowd at the Stork Club, but all in all, it’s not too bad.”
• • •
When finally they got underway, it was about an hour later than Hooker had hoped for. However, the weather was holding, and he figured they could make it up without too much trouble. The jungle heat seemed not as oppressive as the day before. Maybe they were getting used to it.
Chaco continued to be a worry to Hooker. From the start, his attitude had been one of hostility and contempt. Now the dark little eyes burned with hatred whenever he looked at Hooker. He was not sure what had caused the relationship to worsen, but he resolved to watch the little Indian closer than ever the rest of the way.
An hour later, the hostility burned through to the surface. Along a stretch of trail that was heavily overgrown, Chaco hacked away part of a bush to discover a young jaguar. The cat crouched with its eyes wide in fright, teeth bared in a soundless snarl.
Chaco said something to Manuel, and with a malevolent grin, raised his machete and advanced on the animal. The jaguar, with heavy thicket blocking any escape, stood its ground, the spotted fur bristling along its spine. Laughing, Chaco moved closer. He swayed from side to side in a crude dance parody, waving the blade of the machete before him. The jaguar stared up at him, terror showing in the amber eyes. Chaco brought the weapon up over his head for a blow.
“Hold it!” Hooker snapped.
Chaco froze at the sudden command and turned to glare at Hooker.
Keeping his eyes on the chiclero, Hooker spoke to Alita. “Tell him to leave the cat alone. We’ve got more important things to do.”
Alita spoke a rapid sentence. Chaco stared at her incredulously, then answered in a sneering tone.
“He says it is only a jaguar. He is not afraid.”
Hooker did not talk through Alita this time. He rested his right hand on the butt of the .45 and pointed with his left for emphasis. “You … get up there … and get moving. Now.”
Whether or not he understood the words, Chaco got the message. Watching Hooker all the time, he moved slowly back to his position at the head of the line. Once there, he whirled suddenly to decapitate a squat palmetto with a swipe of his blade, then turned for a long look at Hooker. The jaguar, freed from its tormentor, sprang across the trail and disappeared into the brush.
“I didn’t know you cared about animals,” Connie said as they moved on.
“I can take them or leave them,” Hooker said.
“Then why did you stop him?”
“First, we can’t spare the time; second, I don’t believe in killing anything for fun. Third, I just don’t like the little son of a bitch.”
• • •
As they moved on, Connie borrowed a kerchief from Alita to wear over her newly cropped hair. Whenever they stopped to rest, she scrubbed her scalp with her fingers and asked Hooker to search for ticks. He found none.
“You know,” Connie said, brushing her fingers over her head, “I believe I’m getting to like this. It’s certainly cooler. And easier to take care of.” She smiled at Alita. “You ought to consider becoming a hairdresser.”
/> “I have a job,” Alita said without returning the smile. “I work for my father in his store.”
“Let’s move,” Hooker said, anxious to avoid any friction between the two women.
• • •
It was growing dark by the time they found a rocky patch of ground suitable for making camp. Dinner was the same as the night before, but without the iguana meat. They ate in silence, with no complaints from Connie. At Hooker’s request, Alita managed to get a few words out of Chaco. He had hung his own hammock well apart from the others, including Manuel.
“He says we are very close,” she told Hooker when she came back.
“Do you believe him?”
Alita shrugged. “What else can we do?”
“I guess you’re right.” He glanced over at Connie, who was rubbing turtle fat on the back of her hand where a wasp had stung her. She looked up at him quickly, then away. He turned back to Alita.
“Tell me, chiquita, how are you doing? You haven’t said much.”
“I’m fine, Johnny. It’s the Mayan blood. The jungle is no enemy to me.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve been swell, and I want you to know I appreciate it.”
“You glad I came along?”
“Sure.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m glad.”
She hugged him and pressed her body against his.
“Hey, I’m glad you’re here, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”
They banked the fire early and settled into their hammocks under the mosquito netting. Hooker felt the tension slowly drain out of his body. It had been a long two days, and he had slept little the night before. He intended to stay alert, but his eyes would not remain open. The sounds of the jungle soothed him like gentle music. He let himself drift.
His dreams were troubled fragments of flight and pursuit. Enemies with hidden faces were hunting him down, chasing him. He tried to run, but the enemies were everywhere. Then he was caught, imprisoned, pushed into the execution chamber. He was in the electric chair. A steel clamp seized his wrist.
Hooker’s eyes snapped open. Instinctively, his right hand tried for the gun in his holster, but his hand would not move. Something pricked him under the chin.
In an instant, he was wide awake. The thin, swarthy face of the chiclero was so close to his own he could feel the moist breath. The black eyes glittered, reflecting the faint light from the fire. Chaco held his right wrist immobile in a grip of steel.
“What — ” Hooker began.
The point of Chaco’s knife dug into the flesh of his neck. He felt the warm trickle of blood.
“How you feel now, gringo bastard?” Chaco whispered.
The little fuck speaks English, Hooker thought. He held himself rigid, his mind racing, searching for a way out. His left hand was free, and his feet, but lying in the hammock there was nothing he could brace against, no solid point to give him leverage. Any sudden movement, he was sure, would only put the knife the rest of the way through his throat.
“You want to live, gringo bastard?”
Hooker ground his teeth. It seemed he could already feel the blade slicing through flesh, cartilage, arteries, windpipe.
Flecks of saliva dotted Chaco’s thin lips. The son of a bitch is crazy, Hooker thought.
“You not gonna beg? Too bad, gringo, ‘cause then you gonna die.”
Hooker could feel the blade move as Chaco’s fingers tightened on the hilt of the knife. He prepared himself to make a grab for the knife in what was surely a futile attempt to save his life. But he was not going to die without doing something.
In the split second before Hooker could move, the Indian made a choking noise, and his head was jerked backward by something thick and hard wrapped around his neck. Hooker threw himself sideways out of the hammock and felt the blade slice flesh across his throat. He rolled once and came up in a crouch, the .45 in his hand.
Chaco, his little eyes bulging, was flailing his arms helplessly as Manuel easily held him in a choke hold from behind. Gradually, his struggles lessened, and the knife fell from his grasp.
Connie and Alita, awakened by the sounds of the struggle, rolled out of their hammocks. Alita was the first to reach Hooker’s side.
“What happened, Johnny?”
“I fell asleep, and the little fuck tried to cut my throat.”
“You’re bleeding!” Connie cried. She reached out to touch his wound.
Hooker pushed her hand away. “Only a nick. He didn’t have time to finish the job.”
Manuel released his hold on the smaller man. Chaco sagged for a moment, sucking air in noisily. Then, with one hand on his bruised throat, he whirled on the larger man and croaked something in their strange dialect. Manuel’s heavy features drooped into an apologetic, doglike expression.
“Chaco told him they are no longer brothers,” Alita said.
“If you ask me, he’s a lot better off.”
Hooker’s eyes met those of the big man. “We’re even now, Manuel.” He gestured with the gun for the Indian to move aside.
The first rays of the sun slanted down through the trees. Manuel did not move. Hooker turned to Alita. “Tell him to get out of the way.”
She looked at Hooker questioningly.
“Tell him!”
Alita spoke briefly to Manuel, who stood his ground, looking stricken. He mumbled a couple of words to Alita.
“He wants to know if you are going to kill his friend.”
“Damn right, I’m going to kill him. Nobody gets a second chance at me.” He leveled the pistol.
“Hooker!”
Everyone stood frozen for a moment at the sound of Connie’s excited cry.
“Over there, beyond that first clump of trees, I think it’s the airplane.”
CHAPTER 19
Hooker eased the pressure of his trigger finger and glanced over to where Connie had parted the leaves of a fan palm to look beyond.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Come and see.”
He studied Chaco for a moment longer over the barrel of the .45. The thin chiclero had his eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders hunched against the expected impact of the slug.
“Listen to me, skinny,” Hooker said, “and you better understand what I say. You’re never going to come any closer to dying than you did just now. How much longer you stay alive depends on how well you behave yourself. Personally, I hope you screw up so I have an excuse to put a bullet through your sneaky heart. Comprende?”
Chaco’s eyes opened to suspicious slits. They widened and darted around, as though he were surprised to find himself still upright and alive. He licked his lips and nodded to Hooker’s question.
Alita was watching them curiously. “He understands English?”
“He’s a smart boy. He understands a lot.”
“Please, Hooker,” Connie said. “Can’t that wait?”
With the pistol, Hooker motioned Chaco over to a spot where he could keep an eye on him. Then he moved over to join Connie and peered through the gap in the palm leaves where she was looking.
Unmistakably, it was the fuselage and one inclined wing of an airplane. Most of it was grown over with vines and ground creepers, but in spots the metal still showed — aluminum painted in the pale blue and yellow colors of Braithwaite Industries.
“It’s Nolan’s plane,” Connie cried. She started to push through the brush toward the overgrown wreckage.
“Wait,” Hooker said.
She looked at him in surprise.
“Let’s not go rushing in before we have a look around,” he said. “The airplane isn’t going anywhere.”
He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and handed it to Alita. “You remember how to use this?”
“Is it like the one you taught me to shoot in the desert?”
“Close enough.”
Alita hefted the weapon. “I remember.”
Hooker pointed a finger at Chaco. “Keep an eye on the skinny one. I
f he makes any sudden moves, shoot him.”
Alita nodded. The chiclero stared at Hooker with cold eyes. Manuel looked uncertainly from Hooker to Chaco but stayed beside his companion.
Moving cautiously, alert for any sign of movement, Hooker made his way through the brush to where the wreckage lay. The fuselage and one wing seemed more or less intact. The engine had been telescoped back into the cabin by the head-on impact. The other wing was nowhere in sight. It had apparently been sheared off when the plane came down through the trees. The unscratched vertical stabilizer rose out of the tangled growth like a listing tombstone.
Hooker climbed up on the wing and peered in through one of the four cabin windows. The glass was shattered in all of them and completely gone from the first. In the darkness inside, he could make out the four passenger seats ripped from their moorings and tumbled about. The aisle was clogged with debris. A jagged hole was ripped in the opposite side of the body. Through the raw gap in the metal, the jungle had crawled in and taken over.
He raised up to peer into the pilot’s compartment. In the Orion, it was located forward and above the passenger cabin. Hooker almost fell off the wing when a skull looked back at him.
“What is it?” Connie called. “Did you find something?”
He waved her off and leaned in for a better look. The skull, picked clean by soldier ants and scorpions, rested on the mouldy cushion of the pilot’s seat. It leaned to one side so the thing seemed to be looking up at him with an expression of wild glee. More bones were scattered around the compartment. Hooker recognized part of a pelvis and a couple of loose vertebrae.
“What’s in there, Hooker?” Connie said.
“Just a minute.”
“Dammit, I’m paying for this, and I want to see.”
“Okay,” he told her, “you’re the boss. Come on up.”
He gave her a hand up onto the wing and lifted her so she could look into the cabin. Her body tensed under his hands when she saw the skull and what was left of the skeleton.
“Seen enough?” he said.
“Yes.”
He lowered her back down to the wing where she turned and looked up into his eyes.
“It isn’t Nolan.”
“How can you tell?”
Quintana Roo Page 12
